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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27049501">yield</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/acacias/pseuds/acacias'>acacias</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>feather and scale [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Biting, Blood, Enthusiastic Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, First Time, Interspecies Awkwardness, Interspecies Relationship(s), Marking, Polyamorous Character, Weird Biology, Xenophilia</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 19:53:50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,209</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27049501</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/acacias/pseuds/acacias</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>Mipha comes around to Revali’s side, and as she moves the teeth of her trident press up through his feathers, forcing him to turn his head to look at her: lit from behind by the last of the afternoon sun, reflecting off the water’s surface and onto her scales, resplendent, gleaming.</p>
  <p>“Yield,” Mipha says softly, and Revali has never wanted anything more.</p>
</blockquote><p>a sparring match gone right.</p><p>[ mipha/revali, mipha/link mentioned, miphvalink if you squint ]</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Mipha/Revali (Legend of Zelda)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>feather and scale [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2095758</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>80</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Trope Bingo: Round Fifteen</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>yield</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>for the free space in my <a href="https://trope-bingo.dreamwidth.org/">trope bingo</a> card (trope: first time), because i can.</p><p>all my thanks to my wonderful beta, the helpful and patient <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/sturms_sun_shattered/pseuds/sturms_sun_shattered">sturms_sun_shattered</a>! ♥</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The first time Revali visits Zora’s Domain, he finds the place overwhelming.</p><p>Partly it’s the climate, humid and temperate, given to occasional and unpredictable monsoon rains, a fine, silvery mist suspended in the air at all other times; there is never weather like this in Hebra. Partly it’s the grand scale and otherworldly beauty of the Domain itself, the high stone arches that seem at once monolithic and ethereal, the whispering falls and lambent glow at night of the bioluminescent flora native to the region. But mostly it’s the Zora themselves, with their opaline bodies and watchful eyes and their unfamiliar culture, different in almost every way imaginable to that of the Rito.</p><p>Revali, there with Zelda and the other Champions for Mipha to show them her progress with Vah Ruta (which is impressive, given the short time she’s had with the Divine Beast so far) and left to his own devices for an afternoon, wanders the Domain trying to make some sense of it, finding his attention drawn to the way the hand of every other passing Zora seems to rest affectionately on a partner or be clasped in theirs; more often than not, more than one partner, Zora, Hylians, Gerudo, even one or two Gorons.</p><p>Revali does his best not to stare, but when he passes a Rito woman standing with a Zora and a Hylian, her wings draped over the Hylian while the Zora plays with her looped braids and says something Revali can’t make out above the rush of a nearby waterfall, but which makes the Rito and the Hylian look at each other and laugh, he can’t help himself.</p><p>Few Rito leave their village to make their lives elsewhere, and Revali has often wondered what becomes of those that do. Apparently some of them find their way here, and into the arms of a Zora. Or two Zora. Or a Zora and a Hylian.</p><p>Revali looks at Mipha, and Link, and Link and Mipha, differently after that.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>-</p>
</div>The next time the six of them gather in the Domain, Mipha’s command of Ruta rivals Revali’s own proficiency with Medoh, which somehow does not surprise him, and on their way back from the East Reservoir he finds himself exchanging observations concerning their respective Divine Beasts with her, which leads on to an exchange about the Zora and Rito, their beliefs and rituals (the Zora have many rituals, all of them abstruse and archaic, at least to Revali’s way of thinking), their customs.<p>“I noticed,” Revali says - and, realising he hasn’t the first idea how to frame whatever the question is he’s trying to ask her, wishes he hadn’t, but he has no choice now but to continue, “that a lot of Zora, they - you take more than one partner, and - not always Zora? Is that unusual?”</p><p>It’s not as though Mipha and Link make any particular effort to hide their affections for each other, of course - but he’d always assumed, before coming here, that that was something out of the ordinary, scandalous, even. Clearly, he was wrong.</p><p>“No?” Mipha looks blank, but thankfully not offended. “Many of us do. It’s different for Rito?”</p><p>“Yes,” Revali answers without thinking, and the moment the word leaves his beak he wonders why he said it, and so quickly; it isn’t something he’s ever thought about before, not something the Rito speak about openly, and the Hebra wilds are hardly a popular destination for travellers from the other regions of Hyrule. “Actually, I… don’t know. It’s - different for most Rito, I think. Maybe.”</p><p>Mipha looks amused.</p><p>“We have a saying: the heart wants what the heart wants,” she says, and her smile reveals a glimpse of her teeth, row upon row of them, sharp and pointed.</p><p>Revali is uncharacteristically quiet over dinner that evening, thinking of the way the afternoon sun had turned Mipha’s scales to gold, and <i>the heart wants what the heart wants</i>.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>-</p>
</div>Revali’s third visit to the Domain, and Vah Ruta under Mipha’s control looks more like a living being than a machine, moving with a fluidity Revali would not have thought possible, and seemingly with a will of its own.<p>As they walk back to the Domain from the East Reservoir, Revali asks Mipha to spar with him, and she laughs.</p><p>“Let you use me for target practice, you mean?” she asks, and Link and Daruk laugh along with her. Urbosa and Zelda walk a few steps ahead of them, engaged in a separate conversation. “I don’t think so.”</p><p>Revali looks exasperated, his feathers bristling slightly.</p><p>“That is <i>not</i> what I mean, and you know it,” he replies. “I meant with this.” - and he pulls a blade from a scabbard at his waist, a sheath of smooth hardened leather covered over with embroidered cloth, and hands it to her: a double-edged sword, incredibly lightweight, with a decorative relief resembling the interlocking barbules of a Rito’s feathers etched into the blade.</p><p>“I’ve never known you to use this,” Mipha says, turning it carefully over in her hands before handing it back to Revali with a questioning look.</p><p>“I should think not.” Revali returns the blade to its sheath. “These blades are carried by Rito warriors as weapons of last resort. For if we should ever find ourselves grounded, unable to fight from the air.”</p><p>Mipha smiles playfully, a spark of mischief in her lovely amber eyes. “Are you telling me you expect to find yourself in such a position? That doesn’t sound like you.”</p><p>“Not really, no, but -” Revali starts, and when Mipha looks down and her smile widens, as though she’s trying to keep from laughing again, he gives her a sharp look.</p><p>Why is she being like this? For weeks, he’s been displaying his primaries around her, incorporating some aerial acrobatics into his flight on the off-chance that she might be watching, and just now he was very complimentary of her progress with Ruta, making sure to drop into the conversation that his mastery of his own Divine Beast is at least on a par with hers - even preening himself as they spoke, extending a wing and combing his beak through his coverts.</p><p>Really, he can’t think how he could be more obvious, and if Mipha isn’t interested she might at least do him the courtesy of telling him so instead of teasing him like this.</p><p>“- it never hurt anyone to be prepared,” he finishes haughtily, and this only seems to amuse Mipha further.</p><p>“Fine.” Mipha holds up her hands in mock surrender. Revali has been behaving <i>very</i> strangely recently, showing off at every opportunity and even more easily agitated than usual, and if he’s decided a sparring match with Mipha is what’s going to help him with that then she supposes she ought to oblige him.</p><p>“Go,” she says, pointing to a secluded pool on the other side of Ruto Lake, surrounded by willows and other plant life. “I’ll see you over there.” - and she dives into the lake, Revali taking off after her.</p><p>Before he does so, Link gives him a knowing and quietly amused look, which he pointedly ignores.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>-</p>
</div>It’s maybe the second or third opportunity Revali has had to see Mipha in her element, cutting through the swirling currents of Zora’s River as though it’s nothing, breaching the surface from time to time in a rush of white water, and every time it puts him in mind of a tale told to Rito children to warn them away from the dangers of the Hebra Falls, cascading fiercely enough to draw in any who fly too close and drown them in the plunge pools below, of an immense sea serpent that leaps from the water to fasten its teeth in the careless and unsuspecting and drag them down to the deep.<p>As he watches Mipha ascend the falls leading up to their destination, he has to fight the sudden impulse to fly closer, to see whether she, too, might leap from the water to catch him.</p><p>Mipha emerges, glistening, from the pool at about the same time as Revali touches down in the reeds at the water’s edge, her trident already in her hands and wearing an expression Revali isn’t used to seeing on her, wild and watchful. Revali takes a step backwards as he draws his blade, and they circle each other in silence, alert and waiting for an opportune moment to strike.</p><p>Revali is the first to move, lunging forward to aim his blade at Mipha’s flank, and she moves like water, flowing away and to one side and catching Revali’s blade almost carelessly in the teeth of her trident, deflecting it harmlessly away. Mipha steps back, and as they return to circling one another she smiles at him: a predator’s smile, dangerous, and yet somehow enticing.</p><p>Their dance continues, cautious circles broken occasionally by a flurry of movement, strike and counter-strike, as the sun starts to sink lower in the sky, and with each passing minute Revali finds himself less and less able to focus, catching himself looking at Mipha instead of looking for his - or her - next opportunity to strike: captivated by the sinuous grace of her movements, ropes of lean muscle bunching and coiling under her scales, the way her trident looks almost alive in her hands, an extension of her own body.</p><p>It’s all very distracting, and the next time Revali moves in to strike at her he tells himself that this is the reason he leaves himself open for Mipha to dart forward and sweep his legs out from under him with the shaft of her trident - and the next thing he knows he’s on his back, his fall cushioned by creeping rushes and meadowsweet, with Mipha’s trident at his throat.</p><p>Mipha comes around to his side, and as she moves the teeth of her trident press up through his feathers, forcing him to turn his head to look at her: lit from behind by the last of the afternoon sun, reflecting off the water’s surface and onto her scales, resplendent, gleaming.</p><p>Revali thinks again of the fabled serpent, of how his senses would alter as she pulled him down to her glacial depths, the sounds lazy and the light diffuse and gentle, and shivers.</p><p>“Yield,” Mipha says softly, and Revali has never wanted anything more.</p><p>Not trusting himself to speak, Revali casts his blade aside and lets his head fall back in a gesture of submission, and Mipha relaxes - and another wild impulse takes hold of Revali, and he grasps Mipha’s trident as she goes to withdraw it and pulls sharply, bringing Mipha down with it to land beside him, straddling one of his legs and supporting herself on her arms, bent at the elbow on either side of his chest.</p><p>Mipha pushes her trident to one side, watching Revali with equal parts amusement and curiosity. For a moment that seems to last longer than it should, he looks slightly shaken, as though he hadn’t expected this and can’t quite think what to do next - but then he pulls her closer to him and draws his beak along the elegant line of her neck and jaw, and Mipha smiles against his cheek.</p><p>“Oh, Revali.” Mipha sounds as though she’s about to start laughing again. “If this was what you wanted, you should have just asked -”</p><p>“Yes, well, maybe that’s how these things work for you Zora,” Revali all but snaps, squirming away from her in an attempt to maintain a hold on whatever there is left of his dignity, and Mipha crawls forward on all fours in pursuit of him.</p><p>“So. Is it?” she asks, and Revali stares up at her nervously, trying to ignore the way his pulse races feverishly in his chest, his throat.</p><p>“Is what… what?”</p><p>“Is this,” Mipha says, lifting a hand to caress his cheek, “what you want?”</p><p>For another moment that seems to exist outside the bounds of time, Revali forgets to breathe.</p><p>“Yes,” he whispers after what seems an eternity, and Mipha smiles, leaning forward to kiss him, pressing her face into the warm hollow between his neck and cheek, letting her teeth graze needle-sharp against his skin through his feathers.</p><p>Mipha threads her fingers into Revali’s braids, and he grasps her by the waist and pulls her flush against him, both of them falling together into the reed-bed, pliant and welcoming: Mipha sighing contentedly, Revali pulling at her Champion’s sash until she pulls away from him to shrug out of it and set it aside before starting to work at the fastenings of his armour, her breath coming in short, shallow gasps and her eyes gleaming.</p><p>Revali, impatient, helps her with his armour and wriggles out of it, throwing it aside into the rushes as Mipha removes her circlet, which goes the way of her sash - and then they’re entangled again, Mipha combing her fingers through Revali’s feathers, purring appreciatively at their strange, sleek texture, at once firm and fragile, Revali nipping inquisitively at Mipha’s temporal fins as his wingtips roam curiously over her back and shoulders, surprised to find her scales pleasantly rough when brushed in the wrong direction and as smooth as he’d imagined when not, silken and sublime.</p><p>Mipha’s gills flare open, an unfamiliar and unexpected thing, and something compels Revali to touch them, brushing his primaries against the undersides of her gill-slits, soft and supple, like velvet, and Mipha squeals and presses closer, squirming against Revali and nipping at his neck before pulling away again, both of them gasping for air.</p><p>Mipha fixes Revali with a look of enthralment tempered by uncertainty, sending him into a slight panic at the sudden realisation that until very recently she was the only Zora he’d ever even met, still is the only one he’s so much as spoken more than a few words to, and he has no idea what to do with her - but then her expression turns appealingly determined and she slips a hand between his legs, and he moans and squirms and guides her to a slit hidden away beneath his feathers, slick and swollen.</p><p>“Oh,” Mipha says, breathless and a little relieved, “you’re not so very different to us Zora,” - and anything Revali might have said in reply is lost when she pushes two fingertips into him and he writhes agitatedly beneath her, too far gone to feel any shame at the eager and desperate trill that escapes him, nor at how swiftly his cock emerges from its sheath.</p><p>Mipha strokes him lazily, and the way she looks at him - like <i>prey</i>, all sharp teeth and hungry eyes - makes his breath catch in his throat, and he arches, gasping, into her touch, exquisite but not enough, and it’s only when he looks up at her pleadingly and makes a plaintive sound somewhere between a trill and a moan that she finally takes pity on him and straddles him properly, Revali pulling her onto him by the waist and sliding into her as she tenses and presses oddly around him, hard, soft, strange and lovely.</p><p>“Not what you expected?” she purrs, rolling her hips languorously, taking him in fully, and Revali barks out a laugh even as his eyes flutter closed and his breathing quickens.</p><p>“Not - sure what I expected,” he admits, fighting to dredge up the words through the haze of pleasure, and he strokes her gills again, rewarded with a passionate sigh and Mipha’s fingertips tracing a slow and sensuous path from his collarbone down to his midsection, parting his feathers momentarily. “But this is - this is - ah - <i>Mipha</i> -” </p><p>Mipha smiles like she wants to devour him, teeth glinting, pearlescent in the twilight, and increases her pace, anything further they might have said to each other lost in an avid profusion of wordless sounds, Mipha’s hands buried in the soft down of Revali’s breast and the points of her claws pressing through it, Revali grasping her by the hips as her ventral fins twitch fervidly under his hands, and he lets himself be submerged by her, caught in her undertow and gratefully pulled under.</p><p>Mipha leans forward to kiss him again, and this time her teeth, sharp and serrated and so, so many, press insistently into the intersection of Revali’s neck and shoulder before she pulls back to look at him.</p><p>“May I?” she asks, breathing hard, and in the few seconds it takes him to make the connection she starts to say, “I don’t - have to, if you don’t want -”</p><p>“Oh, Hylia,” Revali moans, once he’s worked out what it is she’s talking about; suddenly the scars he’s seen on so many Zora, not to mention on Link, rows of neat little indentations in necks and shoulders, make perfect and wonderful sense. “<i>Please</i>,” - and he offers her his throat, and when Mipha sinks her teeth into him it’s clear she’s holding back, carefully applying just enough pressure to leave a mark when she could do so much worse - but when she pulls away from him again she looks satisfied nonetheless, intoxicated, almost, eyes wide and pupils dilated, her tongue darting from her mouth to lick at a smear of blood on her upper lip.</p><p>Revali rolls them both over, and Mipha wraps her legs around his waist and slides her hands up his chest, through the soft, smooth down at the nape of his neck and up through his braids to play with his crest, gills flaring reflexively as her breathing turns shallow, coming in ardent little gasps.</p><p>“Yield,” Revali whispers against her neck, and she laughs breathlessly and rolls her hips harder, fisting her hands in his braids as he nips enthusiastically at her temporal fins, and a little later she moans and squeals and tenses hard around him, arching her back, the sight and sound of her pushing Revali over the edge, falling into her, losing himself in her, down, down, into the deep.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>-</p>
</div>“We should go back,” Mipha says, although she makes no effort to move, draped over Revali and blanketed in his wings, as she has been for a while now. Revali offers no response except to hum ambiguously, so she allows herself the luxury of staying there, warm and content, for a few minutes more before she gets to her feet, Revali following, retrieving his armour from where he had carelessly flung it earlier and dressing while Mipha adjusts her jewellery and sash.<p>Rather than take separately to the air and the water, they walk back to the Domain, their path lit by the luminous stone columns placed there by the Zora and by the plants that seem to like to grow nearby, radiating soft light as night falls.</p><p>“Your form with that blade leaves an awful lot to be desired,” Mipha says as they cross the Great Zora Bridge. Revali’s form with the blade is more than adequate, of course, but he catches on immediately, giving Mipha a sly sidelong glance that makes her pulse quicken.</p><p>“Lamentable, isn’t it?” he agrees, sounding paradoxically delighted. “Still, today has been very instructive. A few more sessions like that and I will be improved no end, I’m sure.”</p><p>Mipha laughs, sweet and joyful.</p><p>“I’m sure you will,” she says, and slips her hand affectionately into his.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>thanks so much for reading! kudos and comments are appreciated (esp. as i was a little nervous posting this!), and you’re also very welcome to come and talk to me on <a href="https://a--c--a--c--i--a--s.tumblr.com/">tumblr</a> if you’d like!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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